


A Hammer in the Doll's House

by keerawa



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Crueltide, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/pseuds/keerawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth had always suspected there was something wrong with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hammer in the Doll's House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hauntedd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedd/gifts).



Elizabeth had always suspected there was something wrong with her. As a child she was bored by everything that other little girls loved; intrigued by the things that frightened them. Her comfort object was a burn scar, her father a career criminal, and her first serious boyfriend – well, she tried to not even think about him.

So when Tom proposed, she thought, finally, a good man, a husband who would help her be the person she wanted to be, not the one she worried she might become. As the evidence that Tom wasn't on the side of the angels piled up, she denied it, harder and harder, afraid of what it said about _her_ , that this was the only man she had ever connected with.

Later, after she had captured and tried to torture him, her strongest emotion upon regaining consciousness was a bitter anger at her own idiocy for handcuffing Tom and then breaking his thumb, making it easy for him to slip the cuffs.

When her genetic profile tested positive for the 'warrior gene', she thought maybe that was it. The same gene that turned housewives and lawyers into spree killers, was inside her. In a way, it was a relief. Genetics is predisposition, not destiny. It's not like antisocial personality disorder, unavoidable and untreatable, a permanent exclusion from the human social contract. (She had a mental checklist she'd been updating since the age of 14, wondering if she qualified for the diagnosis and carefully hiding potential symptoms.)

Elizabeth couldn't control her genes, or her past, but she could control her own actions. She would decide who she was, not her father, or Reddington, or Tom. She might have gotten a little dirty on the way, but it was still her choice. She was the hero of this story, not the villain.

Definitely not the villain.


End file.
